


Atlas

by historymiss



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 13:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11358231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: And so Miranda chooses them both, again and again, for love, for what they symbolise, for the simple pleasure of seeing them both together.





	Atlas

When she was young, Miranda learned to read on her father’s atlases. He was so proud of them: and rightly so, for they were a huge and beautiful set, richly illustrated with every country the British Empire had touched. Miranda loved them. Not for their bright colours, or comical sea creatures, though: no, she loved them because they rendered the world out flat and equal. With the atlases in her hand, Miranda could know that England, whatever her father said, was not the centre of the world. It was not her exclusive fate to live and die here. 

She could believe, however briefly, in somewhere else.

\---

Thomas woos her with clever words and thoughtfulness, a choice of her presence, over and again, against what anyone else might say. McGraw shows her his affection simply by being there, the solidity of his presence and honour of his touch a declaration against the world: I am here, I make this choice. And so Miranda chooses them both, again and again, for love, for what they symbolise, for the simple pleasure of seeing them both together. 

She supposes one might imagine it’s hard, seeing the men she loves so absorbed in one another. 

Miranda never believed this to be difficult. They are happy, and she loves them: if jealousy occasionally twists in her belly like a snake, well, that’s her own problem, isn’t it? They chose her, and so she chooses their happiness, and makes her own declaration.

\---

Nassau stinks. It’s drab, and uncomfortable, and there’s a pile of hides on the beach that rots and carries with it the stench of the dead. For this and many other reasons, Miranda sometimes idly believes she’s come to the end of the world: sailed straight off the edge of the map and kept going, down into the darkness. 

Of course Thomas had affection for this place: sight unseen is the only way one could love it. Miranda wonders, more and more, if Thomas’ true talent was not his idealism but his ability to love things without fully knowing what they were.

The nights Flint comes, Miranda opens her door to the darkness and listens to the crickets shrill into the black air. She wonders if he knows there’s so little of McGraw left already. She wonders if he can tell she sees the blood cakes in his fingernails, where the soap and brush won’t reach. 

No matter. She catches his hand on hers, lifts it to her lips. The ghost of Thomas’ touch, though he’d never know Flint now. He looks beyond her, eyes fixed on another country, another place. Together, they can re-conjure the past, albeit briefly, and believe in somewhere else.


End file.
